| 2100  6  1   
 | I'll be honest, and tell you that I am in a bad way.  The weather is very hot up here, extremely so, almost hellish. | 
		
		
			| 1013  1  0   
 | Adrienne found her calling in Africa
feeding poor children
or whatever the fuck you do
when you're in the Peace Corps. | 
		
		
			| 1200  3  1   
 | I’ve seen your tired souls
riding under the city
lost in the drowsiness
of morning calm commutes. | 
		
		
			| 1046  2  0   
 | I   was going to write a love poemabout a man   named Alex and agirl named Dee Dee, but I   couldn'tremember them as well as I wanted.    I knew   about the time she painted theirnames on the   overpassbut I have forgottenthings about them.  I don't know what became of… | 
		
		
			| 1395  4  4   
 | We ask was that me? The one on the corner with his hat tipped to the jaunty side? I've wore hats, I've stood on corners. Am I not jaunty? | 
		
		
			| 1443  6  5   
 | When I got to Pete's house he was sitting on the curb smoking a cigarette, bruised and dirty, with a smoking pile of rubble behind him where his house used to be. I hadn't heard yet, but his ol' girl left him and blew up the house when she left. | 
		
		
			| 1755  7  5   
 | “It’s a sad thing,” I said, “when a man has to suffer just for getting a little on the side.” | 
		
		
			| 2316  22  12   
 | Then it got quiet again, the kind of quiet that fills a car even with the radio on and the highway ticking away and the corn flying past regimented and silk tasseled. | 
		
		
			| 1256  4  2   
 | Bobby turned black yesterday. Not like his ethnicity, or skin color. But his soul. Not his soul. Not black either. But a violet desecrating blue. That kind of blue that use to sit in the ocean, then dried up, and vanished into a big terrifying stupor. He looked at me with… | 
		
		
			| 1857  6  1   
 | I can feel the souls 
of those who perished 
here
They’re still here 
like old kites 
hanging in the sky 
tattered, but they 
won’t come down 
or can’t come down 
just yet 
because they haven’t 
fulfilled their 
unborn promises 
t | 
		
		
			| 1186  1  1   
 | To The Graduates Of The Class Of 2010:
You are here today at a critical crossroads of your life. For most of your 22 years you’ve been taught to work hard, obey the rules, listen with respect to your elders and to trust that every effort you make wil | 
		
		
			| 1354  7  5   
 | One day it was boring / to be alive. | 
		
		
			| 1316  2  1   
 | Vietnam, Tet, and beaucoup Charlie | 
		
		
			| 1323  5  1   
 | There was no provision for keeping the post on the door, but I did not have the fingernails to pry it off. | 
		
		
			| 1991  0  0   
 | Alysia slowed down for a moment. She clutched her head again. She looked up and found herself at a playground. There was a familiarity in the air. | 
		
		
			| 1492  0  0   
 | Some things you never forget, especially if they are repeated frequently. I cannot hear her voice saying those words, now, I have forgotten its timber, its pitch, but I remember the words. | 
		
		
			| 1513  1  0   
 | I'm going up and down elevators all over the Financial District and I have no office. | 
		
		
			| 2912  11  6   
 | He tells people about the whores, but what he really recalls is when someone from a room above dropped a rug on his patio. | 
		
		
			| 1583  6  2   
 | cotton balls in your ears do not deafen you to the rocking of your mother's bed...as she and the new uncle set forth on the turbulent sea of their maiden voyage. | 
		
		
			| 1250  1  1   
 | she felt something warm and wet on her ankle and it was producer #1's green tongue and he was still sitting down behind the table and it traveled slickly and caressed her calf with a sensuousness she wouldn't have thought something so ugly could possess | 
		
		
			| 2006  0  0   
 | Every trip her mother leaves it until then: Shouldn’t she look for an apartment in a better area; shouldn’t she try for a job with some future? “And, you know, someday you could get married, Carmen.” | 
		
		
			| 1103  4  2   
 | Most of the deer around here have a higher IQ than the hunters. | 
		
		
			| 1157  4  1   
 | the cocksucking of strategic death planning | 
		
		
			| 1150  10  2   
 |    So, once, we were all like sitting around the kitchen table, and it was so kind of like an okay sort of day to begin with. We were all like a secret theater of strangers, a living children's secret circle, meeting right in… | 
		
		
			| 1586  6  1   
 | ANTHONY    I decide after  Jill and I have dinner at her flat and smoke an enormous joint that I need to  call Tyler, a  conversation I'm not particularly looking forward to.  I leave and she's not happy, but I tell her I  have homework and we kiss a little bit… | 
		
		
			| 1441  6  3   
 | A week ago, Lina had felt a pain crack over her right eyebrow. It was there every day, creeping from her ear to the middle of her forehead. | 
		
		
			| 1184  4  1   
 | A bum leaves his shopping cart 
in the middle of the intersection 
at 7th Ave and Perry St 
and walks away 
leaving everything behind 
Shopping cart gets hit 
by an onslaught of 
yellow taxis whizzing by 
The contents flying out 
into the hum | 
		
		
			| 1609  4  1   
 | She had plain features suggestive of a Native American, which in fact, she was, partly, and she rarely wore makeup of any kind. She easily might have been indistinguishable in a moving crowd except for her loping gait and a tendency to move her hands arou | 
		
		
			| 1051  8  0   
 |  | 
		
		
			| 1668  11  6   
 | He has stubby, rough little fingers. Good. |